


Miracle of Lights

by incidental



Category: Carmilla (Web Series)
Genre: F/F, Fluff, Hanukkah, Holidays, fluff for days, like really no it's just happiness that's all
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-19
Updated: 2014-12-19
Packaged: 2018-03-02 03:18:14
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,747
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2797619
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/incidental/pseuds/incidental
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>What happens when you try to celebrate Hanukkah while trapped in a diner? Well, this. Oneshot, mega fluff.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Miracle of Lights

**Author's Note:**

> Happy Hanukkah! I liked the idea of Carmilla being Jewish in post-expulsion Styria, so I wrote this. Huge thanks to insidiousmisandry on tumblr for writing a great post about the history of Jews in Styria, it was very helpful. :) 
> 
> I hope you enjoy this little bit of fluff and have a happy season, whatever your particular affiliation may be. Happy holidays!

“No peeking,” Laura said, for the third or fourth time.

“I’m not,” Carmilla assured, but not without a hint of hesitance in her voice. “Don’t run me into a table or anything.” She took cautious, tentative steps forward, eyes covered by one of Laura’s scarves tied snugly around them. Laura had her hands on her shoulders, pushing you forward gently, trying to hide the giggling laughter bubbling up in her chest but not bothering to mask her smile.

The main dining area was empty except for Laura and Carmilla; LaF and Perry had retreated to the kitchen, where, based on the smell wafting from the back, someone was burning something. Carmilla’s bets were not on Perry, so more likely was LaFontaine trying to cook something.

“You’re not planning on feeding me whatever that is, are you?” Carmilla asked. “Because if my super senses are right, someone’s burning… chocolate chip cookies?” 

“Don't worry,” Laura said with a laugh, stopping Carmilla in front of a table and squaring her up with the end of it. She undid the loose knot that held the blindfold in place with one hand, running the other down Carmilla’s arm and taking hers in her grasp. “Okay, you can look.”

Carmilla opened her eyes. The room was dark, save for the Christmas lights strung through the windows, which had been boarded up since they took shelter in the diner two days prior. As far as makeshift sanctuaries went, this one wasn’t terrible, and it at least had a decent selection of food. But there were very few of the comforts of home, especially during the holidays.

On the table before her, she saw nine empty coke bottles lined up in a row, each with a white tapered candle sticking out of the top. The candles were jammed in a little haphazardly, not all standing entirely straight, and she could see where the paper had been peeled away from some of the glasses. As she took in the scene before her, Laura began babbling over her shoulder.

“When we got here, you made a comment about how it was the first night of Hanukkah, and that made me think, oh my God, I never thought about how you might celebrate the holidays, you know? So if you’re Jewish, or were Jewish, or whatever, then maybe you might want to celebrate or something. So I uh, I googled Hanukkah and I’m really not sure I did anything right at all, but I just thought—”

“Cupcake,” Carmilla said softly, turning around and taking both of Laura’s hands in hers. “It’s beautiful. It’s perfect, really.” Laura’s face split into a wide grin, and Carmilla could not help but to lean in and kiss it.

“Perfect,” Laura echoed. She then jumped, as if she had suddenly remembered something. “Oh, and okay, so, I also looked up traditional Hanukkah foods, and I gathered that most of it is very fried—which is great, because we’re holed up in a diner, hello deep-fryer—but also sort of specific things that aren’t really in high demand at your typical ex-pat American-style burger place. So I, uh, improvised.” She prodded Carmilla towards the second table, which was laid out with a variety of foods. Looking them over, Carmilla laughed—french fries instead of latkes, a slice of apple pie with ice cream instead of apple sauce or blintzes, and thumbprint cookies with a small stack of single-serve jelly packets next to them.

“You are just unbelievable, you know that?” Carmilla said, shaking her head. 

“We kind of messed up the first batch of cookies,” Laura admitted. “Hence the smell.” Carmilla picked one up and took a bite out of it, and smiled.

“Well, these are perfect,” she said. Laura looked very proud of herself.

“Perry helped,” she said. “By which I mean, Perry did most of the actual cooking, I sort of just told her what to make and stuck my thumb in a bunch of cookie dough…”

“You’re amazing.” Carmilla said it simply, more a statement of the obvious than anything, staring at her girlfriend over a half-eaten cookie. “I can’t believe you did this all for me.”

“Well, yeah,” Laura said, shrugging and searching the room for something else to say. She didn’t have the words, though. How could she? What do you say to the person who saved your life on multiple occasions, who you love more than you even knew you could love someone, who makes your heart beat faster just by the way they look at you? Someone who takes your hands in theirs and makes you feel whole? Someone who makes all the lights shine brighter when they smile? What do you say to that?

Fortunately, she didn’t have to say anything. Carmilla pulled her down into the booth and they spent a while in silence, curled up against the ripped vinyl seat, working their way through the fries and pie and cookies. 

“You know, you Jews really have the holiday food thing nailed,” Laura said, and Carmilla gave a hearty laugh.

“Let’s see how you feel after your first Passover Seder,” she said. “I’ve been eating gefilte fish since the 1680s and let me tell you, it hasn’t gotten any better.”

“Should I ask?” Laura asked.

“Think along the tune of boiled fish paste served at room temperature with radish and carrot slices,” she said. Laura wrinkled her nose.

“I’ll pass,” she said. "Ha ha, get it, pass?"

“Wow,” Carmilla groaned, then laughed. “You know, back in the day, poorer Jewish families couldn’t afford much fish, so they would mix it with filler. And here I thought gefilte fish couldn’t get worse.”

“What was your family like?” Laura asked.

“Oh, geez,” Carmilla said, looking down at the bottom of her now-empty glass.

“You don’t have to,” Laura quickly added. “If you don’t want.”

“I do” Carmilla said, leaning in and resting her head on Laura’s shoulder, “Well, let’s see: I lived in Styria after the Jewish expulsion, but before resettlement, so there were almost no Jews in Styria at the time. My mother was Ashkenazi Jew, my father Catholic, so we mostly pretended to be Catholic—Mass on Sundays, Christmas, Easter, all of that. But my mother’s religion was very important to her, and if it was important to my mother, it was important to my father. So we observed the Jewish holidays in secret, very quietly, and mother always lit a Shabbat candle on Friday evening over dinner.”

Carmilla paused in her story, as if she had seen something in her memory, and smiled.

“One of our servants took note of the special candle on Fridays, and one day she asked my mother, _Why do you light that candle every Friday?_ And mother said, _It’s my Friday candle, why do I need a reason?_ That was what she always said when she thought you should stop asking questions of her— _Do I need a reason?_ ”

“Sounds like someone I know,” Laura quipped, and Carmilla grinned while refusing to look up at her gaze.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she said. “Anyway, for Hanukkah father would dismiss the servants early and we would go down into the basement to light the menorah. We sang the prayers and ate the most incredible food. The gift-giving wasn’t really a thing then, that’s more of a twentieth century addition, but we didn’t need gifts. We just spent the time together, watching the candles burn out, basking in the sleepy thrill of doing something as rebellious as lighting a candle.”

“You are your mother’s daughter, aren’t you?” Laura asked, running her fingers through Carmilla’s loose waves. She nodded a little.

“Quite,” she said, and sighed. “After she died, we stopped celebrating the Jewish holidays. Not because father didn’t care, I think it just hurt him too much. It was too empty without her—in the basement, in the homestead. In the world. Just… very empty, without her.”

“I’m sorry,” Laura whispered. “I know the feeling.” Carmilla snaked her arm around Laura’s middle and gave her a little squeeze.

“I know you do,” she said. They sat in silence, listening to each other breath, watching the blinking lights strung in the window, reflecting off the glass, casting shadows over their faces. In this moment, Carmilla’s world was not empty at all.

“Do you want to light the candles?” Laura asked. Carmilla sat up and nodded.

“I don’t know if I remember the prayer,” she admitted. “It’s been over three hundred years.”

“Well, maybe it’s like riding a bike,” Laura said, digging in her knapsack for a lighter. “Or a horse, or whatever you rode in the 1600s.” Carmilla chuckled and Laura finally produced a small Bic lighter.

“Here,” she said, handing it to Carmilla as they stood before the makeshift coke bottle menorah.

“Okay,” Carmilla said, taking in a breath. “Wow, I really haven’t done this in a while. Well, you light the tall one in the middle first—the _shamash_ candle. It means ‘helper’ in Hebrew.” She lit it, then gently pried it from the mouth of the blue-green glass bottle. “You light the rest of them with the shamash candle, from left to right, opposite of how you put them in. And you pray.”

Laura held her breath as Carmilla began to sing a lilting, throaty song, hesitant and carefully recalled. She lit three of the candles, as it was the third night, and replaced the shamash candle when she was finished. Laura stared at her with what looked like awe written across her features.

“That was beautiful,” she said. Carmilla smiled.

“It’s just a prayer,” she said. 

“No, it was more than that,” Laura said. “It was a song. And see, you did remember. Some things never really leave you, I guess,” Laura said. She wrapped her arms around Carmilla’s middle, and Carmilla rested hers on the small woman’s shoulders. She was somehow even more attractive in the soft glow of the menorah, which was goofy and haphazard and beautiful and absolutely inspired, just like Laura. 

For the first time in a very long time, Hanukkah did not feel empty. Nothing about Carmilla’s world felt empty, at all. It was all here, right in the space between her arms, right under her nose—the love and the light and the happiness she never imagined she would touch again. 

It was a miracle all her own. 

She leaned in and kissed Laura’s forehead.

“I suppose they don’t.”


End file.
